SAINT AUGUSTINE A.D. 354-430
That damned fez!
That silly, fake-oriental headdress had been fifty percent of a disguise that had saved my life. But, having used it, the coldly pragmatic thing to do would have been to destroy it.
I did not. I had felt uneasy about wearing it, first because I am not any sort of a Freemason, much less a Shriner, and second because it was not mine; it was stolen.
One might steal a throne or a king’s ransom or a Martian princess and feel euphoric about it. But a hat? Stealing a hat was beneath contempt. Oh, I didn’t reason this out; I simply felt uneasy about Mr. Clayton Rasmussen (his name I found inside his fez) and intended to restore his fancy headgear to him. Someday—Somehow—When I could manage it—When the rain stopped—
As we were leaving Golden Rule habitat, I had tucked it under a belt and forgotten it. After touch down on Luna, as I unstrapped, it had fallen to the ceiling; I had not noticed. As we three were climbing into those breezy escape suits, Gwen had picked it up and handed it to me; I shoved it into the front of my pressure suit and zipped up.
After we reached the Henderson home in Dry Bones Pressure and were shown where we were to sleep, I peeled down with my eyes drooping, so tired I hardly knew what I was doing. I suppose the fez fell out then. I don’t know. I just cuddled up to Gwen and went right to sleep—and spent my wedding night in eight hours of unbroken sleep.
I think my bride slept just as soundly. No matter—we had had a grand practice run the night before.
At the breakfast table Bill handed me that fez. “Senator, you dropped your hat on the floor of the ’fresher.”
Also at the table were Gwen, the Hendersons—Ingrid, Jinx, Gretchen, Wolf—and two boarders, Eloise and Ace, and three small children. It was a good time for me to come out with a brilliant ad-lib that would account for my possession of this funny hat. What I said was “Thank you, Bill.”
Jinx and Ace exchanged glances; then Jinx offered me Masonic recognition signs.
That’s what I have to assume they were. At the time I simply thought that he was scratching himself. After all, all Loonies scratch because all Loonies itch. They can’t help it—not enough baths, not enough water.
Jinx got me alone after breakfast. He said, “Noble—”
I said, “Huh?” (Swift repartee!)
“I couldn’t miss it that you declined to recognize me there at the table. And Ace saw it, too. Are you by any chance thinking that the deal we made last night wasn’t level and on the square?”
(Jinx, you cheated me blind, six ways from zero.) “Why, nothing of the sort. No complaints.” (A deal is a deal, you swiftie. I don’t welch.)
“Are you sure? I’ve never cheated a lodge brother—or an outsider, for that matter. But I take special care of any son of a widow just the way I would one of my own blood. If you think you paid too much for being rescued, then pay what you think is right. Or you can have it free.”
He added, “While I can’t speak for Maggie Snodgrass, she’ll make an accounting to me, and it will be honest; there is nothing small about Maggie. But don’t expect that salvage to show too much net. Or maybe a loss by the time she sells it because—You know where Budget gets those crocks they rent, don’t you?”
I admitted ignorance. He went on, “Every year the quality leasers, like Hertz and Interplanet, sell off their used cars. The clean jobs are bought by private parties, mostly Loonies. The stuff needing lots of work goes to boomers. Then Budget Jets buys what’s left at junkyard prices, starvation cheap. They rework that junk at their yard outside Loonie City, getting maybe two cars for each three they buy, then they sell as scrap whatever is left over. That jalopy that let you down—they charged you list, twenty-six thousand…but if Budget actually had as much as five thousand cash tied up in it, I’ll give you the difference and buy you a drink, and that’s a fact.
“Now Maggie is going to recondition it again. But her repairs will be honest and her work guaranteed and she’ll sell it for what it is—worn out, rebuilt, not standard. Maybe it will fetch ten thousand, gross. After fair charges for parts and labor, if the net she splits with me is more than three thousand, I’ll be flabbergasted—and it might be a net loss. A gamble.”
I told a number of sincere lies and managed (I think) to convince Jinx that we were not lodge brothers and that I was not asking for discounts on anything and that I had come by that fez by accident, at the last minute—found it in the Volvo when I hired it.
(Unspoken assumption: Mr. Rasmussen had hired that wagon in Luna City, then had left his headpiece in it when he turned in the Volvo at Golden Rule.)
I added that the owner’s name was in the fez and I intended to return it to him.
Jinx asked, “Do you have his address?”
I admitted that I did not—just the name of his temple, embroidered on the fez.
Jinx stuck out his hand. “Give it to me; I can save you the trouble…and the expense of mailing a package back Earthside.”
“How?”
“Happens I know somebody who’s bouncing a jumpbug to Luna City on Saturday. The Nobles’ convention adjourns on Sunday, right after they dedicate their Luna City Hospital for Crippled and Birth-Damaged Children. There’ll be a lost-and-found at the convention center; there always is. Since his name is in it, they’ll get it to him—before Saturday evening, because that’s the night of the drill team competition…and they know that a drill team member—if he is one—without his fez is as undressed as a bar hostess without her G-string.”
I passed the red hat over to him.
I thought that would be the end of it.
More hassle before we could get rolling for Lucky Dragon Pressure—no pressure suits. As Jinx put it: “Last night I okayed your using those leaky sieves because it was Hobson’s Choice—it was risk it, or leave you to die. Today we could use them the same way—or we could even bring the buggy into the hangar and load you in without using suits. Of course that wastes an awful mass of air. Then do it again at the far end…for an even greater air cost; their hangar is bigger.”
I said I would pay. (I didn’t see how I could avoid it.)
“That’s not the point. Last night you were in the cab twenty minutes…and it took a full bottle to keep air around you. Late last night the Sun was just barely rising; this morning it’s five degrees high. Raw sunlight is going to be beating against the side of that cab all the way to Lucky Dragon. Oh, Gretchen will drive in shadow all she can; we don’t raise dumb kids. But any air inside the cabin would heat up and swell and come pouring out the cracks. So normal operation is to pressurize your suit but not the cabin, and use the cabin just for shade.
“Now I won’t lie to you; if I had suits to sell, I would insist that you buy three new suits. But I don’t have suits. Nobody in this pressure has suits for sale. Less than a hundred fifty of us; I would know. We buy suits in Kong and that’s what you should do.”
“But I’m not in Kong.”
I had not owned a pressure suit for more than five years. Permanent habitants of Golden Rule mostly do not own pressure suits; they don’t need them, they don’t go outside. Of course there are plenty of staff and maintenance who keep pressure suits always ready the way Bostonians keep overshoes. But the usual habitant, elderly and wealthy, doesn’t own one, doesn’t need one, wouldn’t know how to wear one.
Loonies are another breed. Even today, with Luna City over a million and some city dwellers who rarely if ever go outside, a Loonie owns his suit. Even that big-city Loonie knows from infancy that his safe, warm, well-lighted pressure can be broached—by a meteor, by a bomb, by a terrorist, by a quake or some other unpredictable hazard.
If he’s a pioneering type like Jinx, he’s as used to a suit as is an asteroid miner. Jinx didn’t even work his own tunnel farm; the rest of his family did that. Jinx habitually worked outside, a pressure-suited, heavy-construction mechanic; “Happy Chance Salvage” was just one of his dozen-odd hats. He was also the “Dry Bone
s Ice Company,” “Henderson’s Overland Cartage Company,” “John Henry Drilling, Welding, and Rigging Contractors”—or you name it and Jinx would invent a company to fit.
(There was also “Ingrid’s Swap Shop” which sold everything from structural steel to homemade cookies. But not pressure suits.)
Jinx worked out a way to get us to Lucky Dragon: Ingrid and Gwen were much the same size except that Ingrid was temporarily distended around the equator. She had a pregnancy pressure suit with an external corset that could be let out. She also had a conventional suit she wore when not pregnant, one she could not get into now—but Gwen could.
Jinx and I were about of a height, and he had two suits, both first quality Goodrich Luna. I could see that he was about as willing to lend me one as a cabinetmaker is to lend tools. But he was under pressure to work something out, or he was going to have us as paying guests…and then as non-paying guests when our money ran out. And they didn’t really have room for us even while I could still pay.
It was after ten the next morning before we suited up and climbed into the rolligon—me in Jinx’s second best, Gwen in Ingrid’s not-pregnant suit, and Bill in a restored antique that had belonged to the founder of Dry Bones Pressure, a Mr. Soupie McClanahan, who had come to Luna long, long ago, before the Revolution, as an involuntary guest of the government.
The plan was for each of us to get other temporary coverings at Lucky Dragon Pressure, wear them to HKL, and send them back via the public bus, while Gretchen took these suits back to her father after she let us off at Lucky Dragon. Then, tomorrow, we would be in Hong Kong Luna and able to buy pressure suits to fit our needs.
I spoke to Jinx about payment. I could almost hear the numbers clicking over in his skull. Finally he said, “Senator, I tell you what. Those suits that came in your heap—not worth much. But there’s some salvage in the helmets and in some of the metal fittings. Send my three suits back to me in the shape in which you got ’em and we’ll call it even. If you think it is.”
I certainly thought it was. Those Michelin suits had been okay—twenty years ago. To me, today, they were worth nothing.
It left just one problem—Tree-San.
I had thought that I was going to have to be firm with my bride—an intention not always feasible. But I learned that, while Jinx and I had been working out what to do about pressure suits, Gwen had been working out what to do about Tree-San…with Ace.
I have no reason to think Gwen seduced Ace. But I’m sure Eloise thought so. However, Loonies have had their own customs about sex since back in the days when men outnumbered women six to one—by Lunar customs all options in sexual matters are vested in women, none in men. Eloise did not seem angry, just amused—which made it none of my business.
As may be. Ace produced a silicone rubber balloon with a slit through which he inserted Tree-San, pot and all, then heat-sealed it—with an attachment for a one-liter air bottle. There was no charge, even for the bottle. I offered to pay, but Ace just grinned at Gwen and shook his head. So I don’t know. I don’t care to inquire.
Ingrid kissed us all good-bye, made us promise to come back. It seemed unlikely. But a good idea.
Gretchen asked questions the whole trip and never seemed to watch where she was driving. She was a dimpled, pigtailed blonde, a few centimeters taller than her mother but still padded with baby fat. She was much impressed by our travels. She herself had been to Hong Kong Luna twice and once all the way to Novylen where people talked funny. But next year, when she would be going on fourteen, she was going to go to Luna City and look over the studs there—and maybe bring home a husband. “Mama doesn’t want me to have babies by anyone at Dry Bones, or even Lucky Dragon. She says it’s a duty I owe my children to go out and fetch in some fresh genes. Do you know about that? Fresh genes, I mean.”
Gwen assured her that we did know and that she agreed with Ingrid: Outbreeding was a sound and necessary policy. I made no comment but agreed; a hundred and fifty people are not enough for a healthy gene pool.
“That’s how Mama got Papa; she went looking for him. Papa was born in Arizona; that’s a part of Sweden back groundhog side. He came to Luna with a subcontractor for the Picardy Transmutation Plant and Mama got him at a masked mixer and gave him our family name when she was sure—about Wolf, I mean—and took him back to Dry Bones and set him up in business.”
She dimpled. We were chatting via our suit talkies but I could see her dimples right through her helmet by a happy chance of light. “And I’m going to do the same for my man, using my family share. But Mama says that I should not grab the first boy who’s willing—as if I would!—and not to hurry or worry even if I’m still an old maid at eighteen. And I won’t. He’s got to be as good a man as Papa is.”
I thought privately that it might be a long search. Jinx Henderson né John Black Eagle is quite a man.
When at last we could see the Lucky Dragon parking lot, it was nearly sundown—in Istanbul, that is, as anyone could see by looking. Earth was almost due south of us and quite high, about sixty degrees; its terminator ran through the north desert of Africa and on up through the Greek Isles and Turkey. The Sun was still low in the sky, nine or ten degrees and rising. There would be nearly fourteen days more sunlight at Lucky Dragon before the next long dark. I asked Gretchen whether or not she intended to drive straight back.
“Oh, no,” she assured me. “Mama wouldn’t like that. I’ll stay overnight—bedroll there in the back—and start back fresh tomorrow. After you folks catch your bus.”
I said, “That isn’t necessary, Gretchen. Once we’re inside this pressure and can turn our suits back to you, there’s no reason for you to wait.”
“Mr. Richard, are you yearning to have me spanked?”
“You? ‘Spanked’? Why, your father wouldn’t do that. To you?—A grown woman, almost.”
“You might tell Mama that. No, Papa wouldn’t; he hasn’t for years and years. But Mama says I’m eligible until the day I first marry. Mama’s a holy terror; she’s a direct descendant of Hazel Stone. She said, ‘Gret, you see about suits for them. Take them to Charlie so they won’t be cheated. If he can’t supply them, then see to it that they wear ours to Kong and you dicker with Lilybet to fetch ours back later. And you had better see them off on the bus, too.’”
Gwen said, “But, Gretchen, your father warned us that the bus doesn’t move until the driver has a load. Which could be a day or two. Even several days.”
Gretchen giggled. “Wouldn’t that be terrible? I’d get a vacation. Nothing to do but catch up on the back episodes of Sylvia’s Other Husband. Let’s everybody feel sorry for Gretchen! Mistress Gwen, you can call Mama this minute if you wish…but I do have firm instructions.”
Gwen shut up, apparently convinced. We rolled to a stop about fifty meters from Lucky Dragon airlock, set in the side of a hill. Lucky Dragon is in the south foothills of the Caucasus range at thirty-two degrees twenty-seven minutes north. I waited, on one foot and leaning on my cane, while Bill and Gwen gave unnecessary help to a highly efficient young lady in spreading an awning slanted to keep the rolligon from direct sunlight for the next twenty-four hours or so.
Then Gretchen called her mother on the rolly’s radio, reported our arrival, and promised to call again in the morning. We went through the airlock, Gwen carrying her case and purse and babying me. Bill carrying Tree-San and the package containing Naomi’s wig, and Gretchen carrying a huge bedroll. Once inside, we helped each other shuck down; then I put my foot back on while Gretchen hung up my suit and hers, and Bill and Gwen hung theirs, on long racks opposite the airlock.
Gwen and Bill picked up their burdens and headed for a public ’fresher around to the right of the airlock. Gretchen had turned to follow them when I stopped her. “Gretchen, hadn’t I better wait here till you three get back?”
“What for, Mr. Senator?”
“That suit of your papa’s is valuable, and so is the one Mistress Gwen is wearing. Maybe everyone here is hon
est…but the suits aren’t mine.”
“Oh. Maybe everybody here is honest but don’t count on it. So Papa says. I wouldn’t leave that darling little tree sitting around but don’t ever worry about a p-suit; nobody ever touches another Loonie’s p-suit. Automatic elimination at the nearest airlock. No excuses.”
“Just like that, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Only it doesn’t happen as everybody knows better. But I know about one case, before I was born. A new chum, maybe he didn’t know any better. But he never did it again because a posse went after him and brought the p-suit back. But not him. They just left him to dry, there on the rocks. I’ve seen it, what’s left of him. Horrid.” She wrinkled her nose, then dimpled. “Now, may I be excused, sir? I’m about to wet my panties.”
“Sorry!” (I’m stupid. The plumbing in a man’s p-suit is adequate, although just barely. But what the great brains have come up with for women is not adequate. I have a strong impression that most women will endure considerable discomfort rather than use it. I once heard one refer to it disparagingly as “the sand box.”)
At the door of the ’fresher my bride was waiting for me. She held out to me a half-crown coin. “Wasn’t sure you had one, dear.”
“Huh?”
“For the ’fresher. Air I have taken care of; Gretchen paid our one-day fees, so I paid her. We’re back in civilization, dear—No Free Lunch.”
No free anything. I thanked her.
I invited Gretchen to have dinner with us. She answered, “Thank you, sir; I accept—Mama said I could. But would you settle for ice-cream cones for now?—and Mama gave me the money to offer them to you. Because there are several things we should do before dinner.”
“Certainly. We’re in your hands, Gretchen; you’re the sophisticate; we’re the tyros.”
“What’s a ‘tyro’”
“A new chum.”
“Oh. First we should go to Quiet Dreams tunnel and spread our bedrolls to hold our places so that we can all sleep together”—at which point I learned for the first time why Gretchen’s bedroll was so enormous: her mother’s foresight, again—“but before that we had better put your names down with Lilybet for the bus…and before that, let’s get those ice-cream cones if you’re as hungry as I am. Then, last thing before dinner, we should go see Charlie about p-suits.”
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Page 14